I love the works of Lois Bujold. She's great at portraying the inner lives of people who want to win, and showing the emotional struggles they have. (Especially Mirror Dance, but that book is not a good entry point into the Vorkosigan universe because it assumes a lot of the background from the earlier books). Many of the Vorkosigan books are available online.
Curse of Chalion is also great, and includes an interesting portrayal of what religious institutions might look like if gods were real and intervened to improve human life, but were not omnipotent. (i.e. the institutions would suck a lot less).
There was a recent discussion considering the idea of a monthly Book (later expanded to movies, links, etc) thread. The poll was pretty unanimous that this was A Good Idea (tm), so let's give it a try!
Post what you're reading or watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing!
I encourage minimal down-voting in the comments here, because this is a thread for sharing subjective experiences, and I would like people to feel comfortable posting their personal opinion without fearing a karma backlash. If you disagree with a person's recommendation, respond with a comment instead.
I think this is a post that lends itself to comment trees, so I will start one with the categories: Books, Movies, Other, and Meta.
I am interested in hearing if you all think it's a good idea to separate out fiction and non-fiction. (So that the Book thread doesn't have Discworld next to Influence, for example. Or so the movie thread doesn't have documentaries interspersed with rom-coms or what-not)
Poster's Note: Wheee! I made my first working link on the discussion post writing interface! I can learn stuffs!